


don’t fall in love.

by angelica_barnes



Series: ABC [15]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, Break Up, Doubt, Letters, Love, Love Confessions, Marriage, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 20:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20014588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelica_barnes/pseuds/angelica_barnes
Summary: love is not enough to fix everything in the world, even as we try.maybe it's not too late for the person writing the letters to pepper's husband, but it might be too late for her.15. over





	don’t fall in love.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from "Terrible Things" by Mayday Parade
> 
> PLAYLIST :  
> Back To December - Taylor Swift  
> Terrible Things - Mayday Parade  
> Hoodie - Hey Violet
> 
> enjoy!

**if you can’t get somebody off your mind**

**they are probably supposed to be there.**

**\- somebody**

  
  


_ I wanted to call you. _

The first letter arrives on a Tuesday and Pepper never checks the mail with Tony living here anymore so she only opens it on Friday while drinking a glass of wine and she doesn’t know who’s sent it but they are clearly quite decidedly in love with her husband, and so though it’s probably not her business, she reads on.

_ It’s been five years, and I’ve read the articles. I know you’re married now. She’s beautiful. Sounds like a real smart one too. Does charity work. I gotta tell ya, Tony, I’m impressed. _

She takes a moment to feel flattered, then plunges back into the haunted words. Seems as though they’ve tortured someone for a long time.

_ But I can’t help wishing it were me, standing by your side at all those press conferences. I always thought we’d end up married, you know. I had a ring and everything - bought it the day I met you, you remember. When we bumped into each other on the street and you spilled your coffee all down my front and I had to wear only the scratchy sweatshirt I had in the back of my car. _

_ It’s okay though. It reminds me of you. It even did back then. _

_ But anyway. I remember I asked you where the nearest jewelry store was and you offered to walk me there. I remember you asked me who it was for, and I told you my mother, and I don’t know if you remember but a year later I told you my mother was dead, and had been since I was eight. You helped me pick out your own ring. I thought that was pretty romantic, even if I never did get to really give it to you. _

_ You stole it. The night I left. _

-

Pepper can recall, from even her earliest days knowing Tony, that her husband had always worn a silver ring on a chain around his neck. He was never the type to wear much jewelry, so she’d always thought it was strange, but didn’t and still hasn’t questioned it because he worries it between his fingers sometimes and gets this far off look in his eyes, so she doesn’t really think she needs an explanation - she knows it means something to him, and something important.

But never this. Honestly, Tony’s never told her about anyone from his past. They met so young she almost thought he didn’t have one.

(She’s so stupid, in hindsight. Who doesn’t have a past? Everyone has a past, and most of them are messier than hers.)

-

The second letter arrives almost a month after the first, so she’s almost forgotten about it. Her and Tony’s anniversary is coming up in two days, and so she’s surprised to once again find a letter addressed to her husband from this mysterious old… friend of his.

_ The first day you kissed me, it was thunderstorming. I thought that was fitting - you were always a hurricane, downright nasty to deal with when you were angry. It took me months of being your friend to realize that you never meant any of the words you lashed out at me with, but they still hurt. I think you should know that. I think you probably do already. _

This friend, whoever they are, definitely knew Tony. Knew him inside and out, like Pepper does, or like she likes to think she does. Knew all his little quirks, his guilty pleasures, his past secrets.

All of it.

_ You told me you weren’t looking for a relationship. I knew that wasn’t true. I could tell by how you looked at me that you wanted me as much as I wanted you - you probably even needed me. But you were scared that I’d hurt you, because you’d never had much of a great past and you wanted me to be there for longer and you figured that if you started something with me then you’d be the one left behind again. _

_ And the truth is, you were. I left you, Tony, not the other way around, and I’m sorry to say so. I regret it, I do. But really, Tony, I’m telling you - I never wanted to. If I’d been given the choice, if you hadn’t screamed at me to leave, if you hadn’t told me you didn’t love me anymore, if you hadn’t locked me out of our goddamned house, the one we bought together with the savings we didn’t feel like blowing on college, then I never would’ve. _

_ I loved you, Anthony Stark. I loved you, I loved you, I loved you, and you knew that. _

Pepper feels queasy. These are private. She shouldn’t be reading them. She shouldn’t be hiding them. She shouldn’t be jealous of them, as if somebody Tony knew five years ago would have anything on her now.

Tony loves her. She knows it, Tony loves her.

_ But I was always left to wonder if you loved me. _

-

That night, Pepper doesn’t sleep. She gets up, walks around a bit, tinkers with some screws and a metal plate with holes in it. She can’t build anything like Tony can, but she can play with her hands.

She hears the clink of the mailbox closing quietly outside and is tempted to rush to the door, to see who’s leaving them, but instead she waits.

An hour later, she walks over, opens the door and the mailbox, reaches inside and pulls out the third letter.

She leaves this one in her nightstand for five days before she loses her self-control to curiosity and pulls it out, ripping the paper in her rush to open it.

-

_ You took my virginity, Tony. Did you know that? I forget if I ever told you. But I know you made it special. You took it slow. You asked me a million times if I was ready, and I was, and I am so glad that my first was you, Tony, because you deserved that memory and I deserved someone like you to make it. _

_ But I always wanted you to be my last, too, Tony. The one I loved for forever, promised to love forever, and Tony, I did. I promised you, that one night, in that hotel under the thin sheets in Georgia? And you told me that you’d been waiting for me to ask you that one little question, that you’d found the ring in my drawer, and I told you that I would. When the time was right. _

_ It never was. _

Pepper knows that feeling. She fingers her own wedding rings and thinks of the one around Tony’s neck and also the one he’s got on his left hand, and she knows that he wanted to ask her but only ever did because of some stupid pressuring from her father.

There were rose petals. Candles. Dinner.

It was romantic, don’t get her wrong, but it wasn’t  _ them _ .

She wanted  _ them _ .

-

She asks Tony about it the next day. She can’t bear to keep reading these, these secrets about him and his past and his love and his story, his story that she never knew or was even allowed a peek at even though she’s his wife and she thought he would tell her everything, had told her everything.

“Who’re these from?”

Her voice is soft, but there’s a bitterness and demanding bit behind it that she tries ever so desperately to hide, and she knows he can hear it. He skims the letter and his eyes turn sad but he tries to keep the melancholy out of his smile. He’s as unsuccessful as she with the tone.

“Nobody, as it seems,” he says teasingly, and she knows he’s trying to reassure her, but this is too out of hand and she feels like she’s going to lose him, feels like she  _ is _ losing him even though the time it’s been since she handed him the letter amounts to about sixty seconds.

“Who was it, Tony,” she says even gentler. “Who was she?”

Tony sighs, folds up the letter, hands it back to her.

“He, actually.”

Walks away.

-

When she asks him about a child and his face goes white, that’s when she knows it’s over. Coincidentally, the last letter arrives on the same day, with no past stories told, just a simple wish list.

_ I wish I could wake up to your face every morning and kiss you senseless, tell you how much I love you. _

_ I wish I could smash cake on your face on your birthday like we did every year, tell you how much I love you. _

_ I wish I could sleep at night with you in my arms, wearing my hoodie - y’know, the black one with the words, “My love, my rose, my beautiful machine,” the one you bought for me and then promptly stole for yourself - _

Yes, she knows the one. Tony never really takes it off. The ring neither.

_ \- and I’d be wearing yours - the one with the broken zipper. It was dark like your eyes but purple, with green drawstrings. You always said you liked yellow better on me, because I was your sun. I remember that clear as the days I would shine. Do you remember that, Tony? - and I could kiss your neck, tell you how much I love you. _

Love isn’t past tense, she notices, and she wonders why it took five years for whoever he is to start sending these.

She’d have sent them right away, she knows that.

_ I wish I could tell you how much I love you. _

Don’t they all?

_ You probably think I am now. That this is my confession. But no, the truth is, I couldn’t fit how much I love you if I took up every inch of every paper on earth. If I never crossed anything out, if the pages went from white to black because you insisted I write over my previous words so as not to leave any negative space behind, I wouldn’t be able to fully convey how much I love you. _

_ But this is me trying now. _

Tony’s not really hers, Pepper realizes. He can’t be hers, not if this is what he had before. She is, at the very least, second in line.

_ I’m sick, Tony. It’d take a miracle to heal me. I’ve always hoped and prayed and wished you were my miracle, and I think you are. _

_ But not the way you’d expect. _

Oh, god. Pepper can feel the tears brimming. She doesn’t know how to deal with this. She’s never had to deal with this. She wants Tony, she needs Tony -

_ He _ needs Tony.

So why exactly does she have him?

_ You healed me. You loved me. You knew me. You did everything you could to make me better, to make me smile, to make me happy, and Tony, I may have been your sun but you were my Earth, and I know I could’ve but I never even thought I could, you know, function without you. You were always there, always coming back, always circling around right back to me and I felt like you could save me from anything, even myself. _

Tony can’t see this, she realizes. It’ll break him.

_ But these letters. This tiny way of speaking, this one-sided correspondence, this story… _

_ It has been my life, and no matter how short, how quickly ended, I will always be glad that you stumbled along and spilled coffee all down my shirt. _

_ So if you want, I’m at St. Vincent’s hospital. Room 203. They’ll let you in. _

_ And I know it’s hard, Tony. I know you don’t want to see me. I know you can’t. _

She’s going to show him anyway.

_ But I promise you, Tony. _

_ I wanted to call you. _

-

Pepper shoves the letter into Tony’s hands and he goes all soft-eyed, then wide-eyed as he reads further until suddenly he’s grabbing his keys and rushing away from her, and she knows where he’s headed.

She sits down on the couch, letters piled neatly in front of her, and waits.

-

When Tony comes home, his eyes are red around the edges. He sits down delicately beside her, as if he believes anything he touches will break, and he just stares at the letters on the coffee table for a moment before he tells her all of it.

The end.

“His name was Bruce,” he whispers, and she knows it’s over.

  
  


**don’t say**

**“there’s still time”**

**or**

**“maybe next time”**

**because there is also**

**“it’s too late.”**

**\- somebody**

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you liked it! thank you for reading :)
> 
> also i'm sorry
> 
> should say that too


End file.
